'A magnificent achievement - richly informative and engagingly written.' - Harvey Whitehouse, Queen's University of Belfast 'In substance and in style it has a discernably individual style that I find appealing and which will make it very useful in a range of undergraduate courses.' - Hugh Laracy, University of Auckland 'Steven Roger Fischer's History of the Pacific Islands is an excellent book that provides encyclopedic coverage of the field. It offers fascinating information not only to interested laymen, but also to students and experts working in the field and doing research in the area.' - Professor Dr Gunter Senft, Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands 'An excellent, comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the Pacific Islands, from prehistoric movements to modern political and economic realities. Recommended for all students of the Pacific.' - Professor Donald Tuzin, University of California, USA 'This is, in my view, the best recent introduction to Pacific history, one ideally suited for undergraduate study and for general readers.' - H. G. A. Hughes, Corwen, Wales, Reference Reviews

STEVEN ROGER FISCHER is Director of the Institute of Polynesian Languages and Literatures, Auckland, New Zealand, and has authored and edited more than one hundred books and articles. He is best known for his successful decipherment of Easter Island's rongorongo script, and of ancient Crete's Phaistos Disk.

List of Maps Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Maps The First Islanders Melanesians, Micronesians, Polynesians The European Trespass The Second Colonization New Pacific Identities Pacific Islanders in Transit Re-Inventing Pacific Islands The 'New Pacific' Selected Further Reading Index